50 years later, King’s speech in Winnetka still resonates

Nearly 50 years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked an audience of thousands gathered on the Winnetka Village Green to help him fight for housing equality and desegregation.

“We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools,” King said on July 25, 1965, according to Tribune reports at the time, which estimated the size of the crowd that day at more than 10,000.

King warned those in Winnetka that segregation “is morally wrong and sinful,” according to Tribune reports, but 50 years later, most North Shore communities still lack diversity, said a panel of experts who recently discussed affordable housing at the Evanston Public Library.

“Income is as much a barrier to housing as acts of discrimination,” said Gail Schechter, an advocate and community organizer for Winnetka-based Open Communities, a nonprofit group that works to promote diversity in the northern suburbs of Chicago. “It turns out that every community that has (less than) 10 percent affordable housing is (less than) 10 percent black and Hispanic populated.”Schechter said Open Communities will host Justice Day on July 26 on the village green to commemorate King’s 1965 speech. She said the event, which will feature Hilary O. Shelton of the NAACP Washington Bureau, is meant to put a 2015 face on King’s efforts to bring affordable housing to the North Shore.”It’s moving forward from fair housing to the holistic picture of the inclusive community,” Schechter said.

Reports at the time described King’s visit to Winnetka as the culmination of the North Shore Summer Project, a grassroots effort that brought the civil rights legend to the Chicago area to help rally for housing justice.

Schechter said affordable housing requires that individuals or families pay no more than 30 percent of their gross income for their housing costs, but that is rarely available on the North Shore.

She said that Winnetka’s volume of affordable housing is low, at 2.5 percent, according to the Illinois Housing Development Authority.

Schechter said the housing agency also estimated Kenilworth’s affordable housing at .5 percent, Glencoe at 1.4 percent and Wilmette at 4.1 percent.

Other communities that have affordable housing percentages at less than 5 percent include Northbrook, Lincolnwood and Deerfield, according to Schechter.

Changing that will be challenging but is important, the experts agreed.

The Evanston panel discussed community land trusts, inclusionary zoning and other tools that they said could increase affordable housing and diversity on the North Shore.

“If our community says we want to be welcome to all, we have to find ways to do that,” said Sarah Flax, housing and grants administrator for the city of Evanston.

Flax said communities in other states charge impact fees to those who own larger pieces of property. Those fees then go into affordable housing funds. Businesses that hire minimum wage workers also could be taxed to generate housing so that those workers could live in the community, she said.In Evanston, advocates currently are working to strengthen the ordinance that requires a certain percentage of new construction to be affordable to those with moderate to low incomes.

Flax said the city is working with advocates and may include rental housing in the ordinance as a way to increase affordable housing.

“There is no one silver bullet,” she said.

In Evanston Township High School’s geometry in construction class, students build a single-family home that then can be moved on a flatbed truck to a nearby neighborhood.

“It’s thinking out of the box,” said John Fuller, housing chair for the Evanston NAACP. “Even if it’s one unit a year, it’s adding to affordable housing.”

The panel said the nationwide drop in affordable housing has a variety of causes – among them the rise in housing costs, the stagnation of median incomes and an overabundance of newly built units.

Schechter said in Winnetka, diversity could be increased if the controversial One Winnetka development dedicates a portion of its units as affordable rather than marketing strictly to empty nesters and North Shore young professionals.

“They could make a significant impact with this development,” she said. “What they could do is use this as an opportunity for mixed housing in Winnetka.”

In 1965, King told the Winnetka crowd about the perils of “the silence of good people” and the Evanston panel urged those in attendance to reach out to their elected representatives on the topic.

“Make noise. That’s the only way you’re going to get anything done,” Fuller said. “It’s going to take a conscious effort, so be vocal.”